Gut feeling on the market? It will continue down

Attention shoppers: special deal on falling knives!

Not very long ago I received a call from a prospective client, who was considering selling the house he’d bought new in 2017, and wondered what he might sell it for now. I remembered the property but not what it had sold for, so I was shocked when I saw that the caller had paid a tad over $5 million for the place. Shocked, because my instant, top-of-the-head opinion was that it was worth, at best, $3.5 today. Further, when I went through our current MLS inventory to back up my estimate, I found an almost identical house on the same street that sold new in 2007 for $4.755 million. It’s been on the market 390 days now, and js currently asking $3.475 after starting at $4.9.

The street in question is, in my opinion, an A- or B+ one, so a better street might support a better price, but I was really surprised by my instant reaction to that 2017 purchase price, which was disbelief. I’m sure I would have cautioned against paying so much two years ago, but still, the difference between what might have been slightly unreasonable then and wildly overpriced today is, er… informative.